Since 2008, Enterprise for Vocational Development (ENVODEV) has pursued ways to give disenfranchised Chadians means to earn more income and alleviate the effects of the country’s landlocked situation. ENVODEV’s mission is to develop vocational opportunities that correspond with the need for better cooking methods and more efficient cooking energy.

Charcoal and Chad

Chad's total forest cover dropped 12% from 1990 to 2010 and currently stands at 9%. In 20 years, Chad lost 1.6 million hectares of forest cover.

One obvious vocational opportunity that meets a nationwide crisis is energy. Chad is a net oil and gas exporter, but most households suffer from a severe energy shortage. Ninety-nine percent of Chadians use wood or wood charcoal as their sole source of household fuel. Today however, charcoal is very difficult to come by after the government issued a ban on its production in 2008. The reasoning behind the ban is simple enough.

Deforestation is a critical matter: It drains ground water, erodes soils, and makes an arid country even drier. But the hardships the ban has on day-to-day life is forcing many to turn to raw wood or continue using illegal wood charcoal to cook food.

pyrolysis program and charcoal project

ENVODEV is addressing this issue by developing an alternative to wood charcoal: the widespread manufacture of safe, clean, and non-toxic Eco-Charcoal briquettes made from unused agricultural residue. By transforming biomass through a pyrolysis process, Eco-Charcoal briquettes become a source of income for cultivators, and a source of energy for city-dwellers, who are most affected by the energy crisis. Read more on the pyrolysis process, and more here on the charcoal program.

Clean cookstove project

ENVODEV focuses not just on producing cooking fuels but also on developing sustainable, accessible, and culturally adapted cook-stoves. The cook-stoves Chadians currently use cause a heat loss of up to 80%.

The cookstove ENVODEV is testing and adapting to Chadian culture is made of rammed-earth and will more efficiently contain the heat generated from wood and biomass-charcoal. Since the ban on wood charcoal in 2008, 70% of the population has reverted to raw wood for cooking.

The production and sales of rammed-earth cookstoves will naturally create vocational opportunities that, again, corresponds to a much needed cooking solution.